“Once a symbol of democracy, the Greek Parliament in particular represents to the majority citizens a painful systemic failure,” wrote Antonis Schwarz and Panagiotis Vlachos shortly after they launched the political monitoring and accountability website Vouliwatch in March 2014. Read More

In every country, fiscal policies are a mystery for the majority of citizens. This often generates the feeling that, somehow, the tax money is not well used by the public administration. BaniPierduti (Romanian for "lost money") is the name of a project that aims to increase awareness and understanding about local budgets. Read More

The City of Paris helps citizens assess the cost of their PB ideas (Source: City of Paris)

Last fall, Parisian voters decided how to spend 20 million euros of their city budget, the city's first participatory budgeting (PB) experience. This year there is more than triple that at stake, and the process of crafting proposals for funding has been opened to the general public. As host to Europe's largest PB experiment, Paris is leading by example. Read More

As the first edition of PDF Italia revolved around "the data society" we live in, there was probably no better person to start the conversation than mySociety's founder Tom Steinberg. Here's a writeup of his speech, ... Read More

The homepage of the Anti-Corruption Alert (ALAC) launched last week in Italy.

Last week, the Italian chapter of Transparency International launched Anti-Corruption Alert, a platform aimed mainly at public servants willing to denounce malpractice in the public administration.
The platform uses GlobaLeaks, an open-source software specifically designed to protect the identity of the whistleblower and the receiver in the exchange of confidential material. Read More

In less than two weeks, on September 29th, Personal Democracy Forum will arrive in Italy for the first time, kicking off a series of conferences and events on innovation. More than 30 speakers will gather to explore the theme, “In a data society.” Read More

“We have a plan to end corruption. And we need your help to make it happen”
This is the message launched by Czech NGOs to citizens in an effort to rebuild trust and credibility towards the institutions, a even more urging need, after a huge corruption scandal disrupted the political scene a little more than a year ago.
The NGOs agenda is made of 9 laws and is the core of a project called Rekonstrukce Státu (Reconstruction of State), a joint effort of more than 20 civil society organizations. Read More

The results of the Red Tape Index, the first monitoring study by Bantay.ph

The Philippines, a country of almost 100 million, is considered among the most corrupt country in Southeast Asia, despite a boost in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index in the past few years (from 134th in 2010 to 94th in 2013 out of 175.)
Corruption involves all levels of government, but benefits also from a mindset of tolerance, says Happy Feraren, the co-founder of Bantay.ph, an anti-corruption educational initiative that teaches citizens how to monitor the quality of government services, sometimes by going undercover. Read More

"You are not invisible" - Tweeted by @Kanter57640, one of the Tweets2Rue members.

While most solutions to homelessness focus on addressing physical needs -- a roof over the head and food to eat -- one initiative in France known as Tweets2Rue knows that for the homeless, a house is still not a home, so to speak: the homeless are often entrenched in a viscous cycle of social isolation that keeps them invisible and powerless. Read More